Impact Centre teams up with AGE-WELL to provide entrepreneurship training and startup support

Dr. Pooja Viswanathan, CEO of Braze Mobility Inc, says the AGE-WELL-Impact Centre partnership is great news for startups that have innovative solutions to support healthy aging.

We are excited announce that the Impact Centre has been named the AGE-WELL Core Facility in Entrepreneurship. As a Core Facility, the Impact Centre will provide AGE-WELL researchers and trainees startup support, one-on-one mentoring, customized training programs on entrepreneurship, access to labs and equipment and other services related to innovation and commercialization.

“We enthusiastically welcome the Impact Centre as a new AGE-WELL core facility that will help us to fuel entrepreneurship and nurture startups in the field of technology and aging,” says Dr. Alex Mihailidis, AGE-WELL Scientific Director. Dr. Mihailidis is also an associate professor at the University of Toronto and the Barbara G. Stymiest Research Chair in Rehabilitation Technology at Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, University Health Network (UHN).

“AGE-WELL and the Impact Centre share a strong interest in the development of innovative real-world products and services,” says Dr. Mihailidis. “This new relationship will provide crucial support for AGE-WELL startups, researchers, trainees and network partners. We see many synergies and successes ahead.”

This is the first new AGE-WELL core facility to be announced since 2015 when AGE-WELL was established with federal funding to support Canadian research and innovation in the area of technology and aging. The Impact Centre joins two other AGE-WELL core facilities, iDAPT (Intelligent Design for Adaptation, Participation and Technology) and the IRMACS Centre (Interdisciplinary Research in the Mathematical and Computational Sciences), to promote and trigger national and international interactions for AGE-WELL and provide physical and/or virtual venues for researchers to meet, collaborate and exchange ideas.

“I am extremely impressed with what the AGE-WELL team has accomplished to date,” says Dr. Richard McAloney, the Impact Centre’s Director of Entrepreneurship. “This is a testament to the quality of the management, researchers, trainees and network partners.”

“The Impact Centre and AGE-WELL’s goals are well aligned and we look forward to combining our complementary expertise,” says Dr. McAloney. “Through this effort we will be able to find opportunities to promote healthy aging that would otherwise slip through the cracks and we’ll be able to bring those to the world faster.”

“The Impact Centre has provided me with training in key areas required to be an entrepreneur,” says Dr. Pooja Viswanathan, CEO of Braze Mobility Inc, a startup that is commercializing an innovative add-on feature that can transform a regular powered wheelchair into a “smart” wheelchair able to help prevent collisions. Dr. Viswanathan, a postdoctoral fellow in computer science at the University of Toronto and an AGE-WELL trainee, receives support from AGE-WELL through a Strategic Investment Program grant. Braze is incubated at the Impact Centre.

“The resources, including personnel, equipment and services, offered by the Impact Centre, AGE-WELL and other core facilities such as iDAPT and Semaphore Lab, have been integral in developing our product in a cost-effective manner helping us get to market faster,” says Dr. Viswanathan. “Today’s announcement, formalizing the relationship between AGE-WELL and the Impact Centre, is great news for startups that have innovative solutions to support healthy aging.”